Portuguese Intensive Course in Berlin

Absolute beginners with little or no prior knowledge who want to learn Portuguese from scratch.

You take your first steps in Portuguese and learn to communicate in everyday situations – introducing yourself, greeting people and talking about yourself. From the outset you train the typical nasal sounds (ão, ãe, õe) as well as the pronunciation of lh, nh and ç. You develop a feel for grammatical gender (o/a) and the matching article and adjective forms. Along the way we show you where European and Brazilian Portuguese already differ in pronunciation and forms of address.

Learners with basic Portuguese who want to communicate more confidently in familiar everyday situations.

You expand your vocabulary and handle typical situations such as shopping, travelling and making arrangements. Grammatically you enter the past and learn the difference between the pretérito perfeito (completed action) and the pretérito imperfeito (state, habit). You practise using prepositions with their typical contractions (em + o = no, de + a = da). In the process we deepen your understanding of how vocabulary and tense usage differ between European and Brazilian Portuguese.

Learners who can already get by and now want to speak coherently about familiar topics.

You reach linguistic independence and can express yourself coherently on familiar topics such as work, travel and personal experiences. You are introduced to the subjunctive (subjuntivo), which is used far more frequently in Portuguese than in English – for instance after wishes, doubts and in subordinate clauses with que. The futuro do conjuntivo, a special feature of Portuguese (quando eu chegar), is also introduced. We work contrastively with European and Brazilian texts and listening examples.

Advanced learners who want to express themselves fluently and in a nuanced way on a wide range of topics.

You communicate fluently and spontaneously and can discuss abstract topics as well as professional matters. You master the complete subjuntivo, including the imperfeito and the pretérito perfeito composto do conjuntivo, and use it in complex sentence structures. A special feature of Portuguese is the personal infinitive (infinitivo pessoal), which you learn to distinguish reliably from ordinary infinitive and subjunctive constructions. You sharpen your awareness of stylistic and regional nuances between European and Brazilian Portuguese.

Very advanced learners who want to use Portuguese confidently in professional and academic contexts.

You use Portuguese flexibly and effectively for social, professional and academic purposes and understand demanding, longer texts. You master fine grammatical distinctions such as the use of the future forms, the futuro do pretérito (conditional) and the fusion of object pronouns with the verb (dá-lo, comê-lo-ei). You handle idioms, collocations and stylistic registers with precision. You move confidently between European and Brazilian Portuguese and recognise literary and journalistic subtleties of both varieties.

Learners at the highest level who have near-native command of Portuguese and want to perfect the final subtleties.

You understand virtually everything effortlessly and express yourself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, even on complex matters. Even the finest shades of meaning, regional accents and historical layers of Portuguese are accessible to you. You command the full stylistic range – from the literary prose of Saramago to Brazilian colloquial speech – and switch effortlessly between the European and Brazilian norms. In this course you perfect idiom, rhetorical impact and native-speaker intuition.